My journey with Lemmy started in 2022 out of interest in the fediverse and paranoia around how much control social media companies have, and how little choice common people are left with over the Internet.
Lemmy was much smaller back then. I really wanted it go get bigger, and tried to contribute to it. But it was small enough to be unsatisfying, so I would go back and forth between lemmy and Reddit.
After the Reddit fiasco, I shifted more and more towards lemmy and less towards Reddit. I finally abandoned Reddit when third party apps broke. I only go there for specific questions in communities that aren’t active on lemmy.
What about you?
I showed up last year in the aftermath of reddit’s APIgate. I’m a longtime reddit user, for better or worse. Though this isn’t my first foray with reddit alternatives. I’ve tried Imzy, Voat (briefly; very briefly), and Tildes. The last of which is still doing quite well, though it’s a bit different from reddit and even Lemmy, in terms of overall culture and activity.
Admittedly, I am still on reddit, though my activity is reduced. I stopped using it almost entirely from like June through October, but then slowly made my way back. But instead of spending all my time on reddit as before, I spend my time between Lemmy, Tildes, Mastodon, and reddit. So I think that’s still a win in my book. I don’t mind using multiple sites for information and entertainment; it’s kinda like what people did in the earlier days of the Internet. Further, I’m not really anti-centralized platforms. I still have a FB account. I scroll Instagram daily. I use Discord. I use YouTube. I use what gives me value.
Anyway, I landed on Beehaw after briefly looking at other instances and looking at Beehaw’s “philosophy,” which seemed attractive. Overall, Lemmy is not the promised land; There are issues I see with the platform, the userbase, and even with the current state of federation. But no site or platform is perfect. Every platform has upsides and downsides. I get what I want out of it and try to “give back” what I can.